Oh! Sorry that we missed you last week! Space Codesign was exhibiting at EDS Fair (combined with ET) as part of our Asian distributor, Avant Technology. We would have loved to give you a demo of our SpaceStudio ESL hardware/software co-design EDA tool. We had a great reception among Japanese companies for our debut, as Japan is arguably the one of the most advanced C-based hardware and systems market on the planet.

Personally, it was my first time in Japan (after all these years, after all those air miles!) and it will definitely not be my last ... :)

@alex_m1, thank you. The Spansion angle you pointed out is an interesting one. Now that former Fujitsu Semi's microcontroller business is a part of Spansion, Spansion has a vested interest in promoting mruby.

I hear the maker community in Japan is actually growing strong. I haven't had a chance to investigate more first hand, but that's what I hear from my colleagues working at EE times Japan.

Another option regarding mruby: ruby is popular in japan(for general programming). Maybe spansion want to improve prototyping of embedded systems in japan, and grow the maker community there. It makes sense since japanese companies buy more japanese micro's.

I don't know mruby specifically, there were plenty of attempts to get scripting languages for microcontrollers.they largely failed because they need more memory, they really slow the code , they dont support real time code, and the general conservativeness of developers.on that note , even even inventor of Ruby thinks most embedded code will be in c/c++ not mruby.

on the other hand spansion can create microcontrollers in 40nm ,which might change the game.and them pushing mruby could certainly help.

and there is the new "micro python" which claim to solved the speed and real-time issue.we'll see after it's kickstarter ends.

In conjunction with unveiling of EE Times’ Silicon 60 list, journalist & Silicon 60 researcher Peter Clarke hosts a conversation on startups in the electronics industry. One of Silicon Valley's great contributions to the world has been the demonstration of how the application of entrepreneurship and venture capital to electronics and semiconductor hardware can create wealth with developments in semiconductors, displays, design automation, MEMS and across the breadth of hardware developments. But in recent years concerns have been raised that traditional venture capital has turned its back on hardware-related startups in favor of software and Internet applications and services. Panelists from incubators join Peter Clarke in debate.